Photograph image of a group of musical percussion instruments on a table

We are sorry we haven’t got things right with regards to the announcement about Yam Jams and that this has caused upset to people. We take on board that people do not feel listened to and will therefore be coming out to the community to find out what you would like to see from an ECHO/ Encore music activity.

Over the last year we have had to constantly update and adapt our services to make sure we can continue to deliver activities that are safe but still bring people together.

Whilst we knew that people would be disappointed to hear that Yam Jams was not coming back, we thought that the idea of a new project, the opportunity to explore a variety of music types and different ways for participants to be involved, would be exciting. We hadn’t anticipated the strength of feeling and that change can be scary, especially if people don’t have enough information at the right time.

We want to have a conversation with you about what we can safely deliver and so will be sharing with you over the next few days some ways you can feedback and we will let you know a bit more about our aspirations for the service. Whilst we cannot undo any mistakes to date, we do want to ensure that going forwards we do not repeat them.

We have learnt a lot from this experience and recognise that we haven’t met the high standards of involvement that we normally pride ourselves on

.Mike Cook

Chief Officer, ECHO